To make government work better for us, curb lobbyists

Saturday

Dec 7, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 7, 2013 at 11:02 AM

Two-and-one-third centuries ago, the men who constructed the framework of this country built a very strong structure, one that was capable of being added on to or remodeled if the majority of the people agreed.

Two-and-one-third centuries ago, the men who constructed the framework of this country built a very strong structure, one that was capable of being added on to or remodeled if the majority of the people agreed.

The structure they built was one in which the individual voters (men) hired others to present their opinions and ideas for all of our hired representatives to vote on and to either enact or toss into the trash.

Much has changed over the 237 years since it was first the law of the land, and many of the changes made were for the best. Freeing shanghaied citizens of other countries and granting women the right to vote were things that we should be very proud of — things that were enacted by our hired representatives.

Yet with all the good that our hired representatives have done, there is much that we need to be concerned about. Our hired people no longer represent the average person in the U.S. today.

It’s not a Democrat thing or a Republican thing; they now represent those businesses and organizations that provide the money for them to be hired for another four or six years.

They have lost touch with what life is like for the other 317 million people who make up the United States today.

The government agencies that have been set up no longer are there for the good of the people. Most government agencies have become wary of the common person, and the relationships individuals have with government agencies usually are adversarial instead of helpful.

A very wise man and a family relative, retired U.S. District Judge William K. Thomas of Cleveland, once explained the role of government and the laws of the land as being in place to protect and serve the average person. That was only 30 years ago, but the role of government already was changing back then.

Our system of government, one built on citizens electing and paying for people to be their proxies in Columbus and in Washington D.C. and every small town in America, no longer is the structure our Founding Fathers conceived two centuries ago. People no longer trust any government agency, and probably for very good reason.

When the approval rating of our elected officials is around 10 percent, we need to change things back to what those wise men envisioned back in the infancy of our nation.

Strictly limit lobbyists’ contact with and influence on the people we hire to do our bidding. We need laws to be enacted that are representative of what the majority of the voters want. We also need to make voting easier and much more universal. The Internet could make it much easier for many people to vote and take part in deciding what the majority of the people want and desire. Many people would vote without getting dressed. It won’t happen though, because those 636 people who control everything that happens in this country would have less of our money to waste and more oversight by the people who truly own this country, the average person.